Customer Rating:  
Summary: not as good as expected
Comment: After reading the posted reviews, I was looking forward to receiving the musical but was disappointed when it finally arrived. I found the music to be somewhat harsh and, while the premise was intriquing, it probably translated better on the stage...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Welcome Joshua Schmidt
Comment: A powerful score to a dark brooding musical. Performances are uniformly superb. Thanks to PS Classics for recordings this extraordinary piece of music theater. Keep an eye/ear on composer Joshua Schmidt!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Grabs You!
Comment: Let's face it: the story is not a pretty one. The music faithfully reproduces the characters' feelings. Dark, but a good ride.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Progressive Composing
Comment: Whenever amazon recommends a new CD to me, I usually heed the call because their computers really seem to have my musical tastes nailed down pretty good. I'd say I end up liking 95% of what they recommend, while maybe 1 in 100 really end up hitting the mark dead-on. Well, Adding Machine is one of those rare choices.
Who is this Joshua Schmidt guy anyway? Turns out that he's never written a musical before. Maybe that's why this score is so incredibly good. The piano work is nothing short of amazing - featuring rhythmically challenging passages that feel more at home on an Emerson Lake & Palmer album than in an off-Broadway production. And the use of deep, electronic, highly synthetic keyboard accompaniments mixed in with all that progressive piano - well, it's enough to make any composer worth his or her salt stand up and say, "I wish I had written that." Truly original is the only way that you can describe this score.
But the accolades don't stop with the underscore. In fact, what makes all of this so brilliant is the intermittent use of simple compelling melodies intermixed with semi-atonal vocal rants that bounce you between Sondheim and Schwartz (if that is even possible) within a matter of seconds. And just when you think the score has run away from you, a simple repeating melody or lyric somehow brings everything right back into focus. Just incredible.
And then there's the story. Well, we can't credit the composers for that. But we can credit them with having had the vision to know that this is the story that musical theater has been in desperate need of for the last decade. You can have your bubble game remakes of 80's movies and TV shows. You can have your poorly executed and oversold band "biopics" which, I'm sorry, are just excuses to rehash old hit songs and somehow attempt to bring them together to form a profitable storyline. Yes, you can have all of that. But give me this dark, disturbing, plot line any day over any of that nonsense. Yes, Adding Machine is a story that actually says something to its audience and makes you think about a few things in life. And, what's more, this CD (and the fantastic lyrics that go with it) tell the story brilliantly - as if you are listening to some kind of musical book-on-tape. Just amazing.
So, if you haven't gotten it yet - I LOVED this CD. And that's coming from someone who isn't exactly easy on most new musical theater (if you couldn't tell). Sometimes I ask myself if I'm being too harsh. But, when a score like this comes along and shows us all what musical theater CAN BE, I start to think that I might have it pretty darn right.
I know I haven't spent any time on the performers, who also deserve more than just a brief mention, even if that's all I can give them (I'm still too floored by the music!). Of course. I couldn't love a musical soundtrack this much without also loving the performers who deliver it. The standout is, of course, Joel Hatch who, in Mr. Zero, gives you a character that you can empathize with, relate to, yet, somehow, never quite cheer for - while he and his castmates, with their over-dramatized accents, allow the listener not only to feel, but also to SEE, every scene in which they are acting. Ralph Kramden has nothing on this guy, and you love him every bit the same. And that's exactly why the message that he delivers somehow cuts right through.
In summary, I urge you to give this music a listen. I don't know why, but I keep coming back to Keith Emerson meets Stephen Sondheim. I know a lot of people probably won't make that leap. But, those of you who do, you'll know what I mean.
Here's to a long and prosperous career, Mr. Schmidt - whoever you are. I'm sure nobody will be saying that for too long.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It all adds up
Comment: On this recording, the remarkable score comes off even better than it does in the theater. Joshua Schmidt employs a range of styles, from minimalism to 1930s pop, and to great effect in this harrowing work about a man named Mr. Zero who is replaced by an adding machine. Joel Hatch's nearly anti-musical vocal performance brings out the depth of the score as he croaks his way through an essentially untuneful or anti-tuneful life as underscored by the brilliant singing of the support ensemble, particularly Joe Farrell as the matricidal fellow inmate. Of course, the score can't capture the stunning break in visual style the stage production employs, but the last third of the music really goes many unexpected places, just as the characters do. Each listening brings fresh insights.
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